Name: DJ Shadow
Genre: Electronic
Day: Friday

Wikipedia sez: “Josh Davis, a.k.a. DJ Shadow is a turntablist, producer, and songwriter. His recordings are primarily noted for their lush, atmospheric, sample-based sound. DJ Shadow began his music career as a disc jockey at the community radio station KDVS. During this period he was significant in developing the experimental hip hop style associated with the California-based Solesides record label. His early singles for the label, including In/Flux and Lost and Found (S.F.L.), were genre-bending works of art merging elements of funk, rock, hip hop, ambient, jazz, soul, and used-bin found records. DJ Shadow is often cited as a leading creator of trip-hop, though this is a label he strongly contests.”

I like DJ Shadow. Well I did, at least until he released “The Outsider”. I found Shadow via my search for everything and anything Jurassic 5 related, and since Cut Chemist did two amazing mixtapes with him (”Brainfreeze” and my personal favourite “Product Placement”) chock full of samples from here, there and everywhere as well as the brilliant “Endtroducing” and “Private Press” albums. Then in 2006 he released “The Outsider”, and the damn album is full of bay-area hyphy rap. No cool samples or beats, just rhymes about getting high on cough syrup. I wasn’t the only one who was upset by it, but at least Cut Chemist was going to come out with a decent sample based album (for the record, he didn’t). I suspect that Shadow will be doing a hyphy set rather then hearing Building Steam with a Grain of Salt, so I will probably give it a miss. But if Cut Chemist suddenly pops up…

Likelyhood of Seeing at Coachella: Doubtful, but I’ll probably check it out anyway.

Read on to view DJ Shadow live videos…

DJ Shadow - Building Steam with a Grain of Salt (Live at the Palace, Melbourne, Australia)

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist - Introduction (Live)